In my five years of being licensed to carry a gun, I’ve never once been “made” or had someone notice that I was carrying a firearm in public. So today we spent with Bitchy Mom and Bitter’s six year old nephew. We took him to the Air and Space Museum Annex right next to Dulles first.

Bitter’s sister-in-law is a nutty anti-gun type who doesn’t even let the kid make a gun out of his finger, so we thought his next stop should be the NRA’s National Firearms Museum in Fairfax. Bitchy Mom thought a nice “pop” gun would be a fine souvenir for him to take him and show mom *grin*.

After we dropped them off so they could head back to Roanoke, he gave Bitter a big hug goodbye, and then came over to hug his new uncle. I wasn’t expecting what was coming next:

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”

I look around nervously to make sure no one from the nearby wedding party was around to hear that. I had my Makarov at 4:00 in a leather holster, with an unbuttoned button up shirt covering it. Does a great job of concealment from people looking at it straight on. Not so good a job from someone of rather short stature who’s looking up at you. I’ll have to remember to untuck the t-shirt next time children are about, or I’m packing at a midget convention.

“I keep it in my pocket so I can get to it if I need it”

I was hoping that would be enough to answer the question.

“Why do you have a gun in your pocket?”, he asked again.

How do you explain these things to a six year old? There wasn’t time anyway. Earlier we had seen the Enola Gay, the B29 that dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima. It was a special B29, but also something you can’t really explain to a six year old.

The funny thing is, I was embarrassed that I had been “made”. Maybe I should suggest to Michael Nutter, you don’t need the whole “stop and frisk”. Just get some six year old to go up to gang banger looking types and give them a hug. “Have you hugged a drug dealer today?” It’s the kind of touchy-feely crap that’s right up their alley!

I think now I have to call him John “I’m doing my job” Street. After reading this article, it’s pretty clear that despite his assertions, that no, he is not. Can you imagine what would happen to me if I decided to leave the office for a day to stand in line for an iPhone?

UPDATE: Well, at least John Street had the decency to pull up a chair and wait in line with everyone else. Mayors of some other towns didn’t even have the decency to do that.

I have to admit, my muse has gone on vacation too. But I haven’t so run out of things to say that I’m resorting to posting what the trolls say on the blog. When you get people posting crazy stuff, just ignore it. That’s what most of us do. I mean, I’ll gladly approve someone who disagrees with me, even if it sounds a bit nuts, but if you’re completely off the reservation, to the point where I don’t know what you’re saying or why you’re babbling, the “Spam” button works pretty well for that.

In defense of the Brady Campaign, I think that was probably an actual comment, though I see some people are skeptical of this. You’re probably seeing what they don’t approve. But still, we all get crazy stuff as comments from time to time. This is like having show and tell at an elementary school, and the Brady’s are the kid that brings a pencil. We’ve seen it before, and we all have one.

Look, when you take someone who has been behind a desk for half their career and put them in patrol for the summer, who is that helping? No one. They don’t want to be there, so they’re not going to be stopping cars and rushing to priority jobs. But, when the media asks, the brass can say, “We’ve increased the amount of officers on the streets!” It’s a shell game.

Yup. I talked about that a few months ago here. Until the city politicians actually face the problem, instead of deflecting blame to Harrisburg or elsewhere, this is going to continue. The city’s politicians lack the political courage to do anything. The only thing that will work is taking the criminals off the streets and keeping them off the streets. It’s my understanding that the courts, jails and prisons in the city have become a revolving door.

I think it’s a tough thing to for the politicians to face, because to go into a bad neighborhood and say “We’re getting the criminals off the streets, and we need your help” means telling folks that you’re going to lock up someone’s brother, child, nephew, husband or other loved one. It means people will have to take responsibility. It’s far easier for the politicians to deflect blame, whether it to be to Harrisburg, guns, drugs, what have you, so no one has to take responsibility. There may be things Harrisburg can do to help, but the problem won’t abate until someone stands up and admits what the problem is. I may have my disagreements with Michael Nutter, but he’ll be an improvement over the circus clowns that currently run city hall. Hopefully he’ll impress me.

Buying a new surplus SKS is not for those who don’t know how to completely strip down a rifle and reassemble it. I don’t mean field strip either, I mean strip down every part, clean, and reassemble. I picked it up from the UPS depot on Tuesday, and got to work immediately. I learned that Bitter frowns on the practice of using a tin foil tray in the toaster oven to melt off the excess cosmoline from the smaller parts. After a mishap, I ended up with a new toaster oven. It was a tough battle, but I think I’m happy with the result:

It’s now ready to take to the range. I can’t wait to shoot it. It had quite a lot of cosmoline on it that had to be removed. Turns out Gunzilla doesn’t work as well as Hoppes No. 9 on cosmoline. It works decently, but just not quite as well. That’s probably because Hoppes is mostly kerosene, which is going to solvate a heavy grease better than most other things.

What has me stoked is that it’s in really good shape. No rust, very little wear on the finish. Shiny barrel without any evidence of pitting. Good stock, which looks like it’s seen some use, but in decent shape. The kit that came with it has someone’s name written inside, which I thought was a nice added touch.

Joe takes some local reporters to the range. I’m curious to see what they write. It’s good that they sought out someone with first hand experience and knowledge, rather than talk to the first “expert” willing to offer a quote. I notice Omie is left handed, and rather cute. Of course, any chick behind an AR-15 automatically gets a +5 in the looks department!

That looks like the same fiberglass Israeli mag that was my favorite for a while.

We screwed up. It seems that not only is Pat Brown not anti-gun, but she’s actually pretty pro-gun. In the interest of not eating our own, I’m hoping everyone gets the word out that we misunderstood what she was saying.

It’s difficult, when you don’t know someone from jack, and hear a statement on the air that can be taken a certain way, to decide how to take it. Given CNN’s reputation on our issue, it’s easy to misunderstand something, or take it the wrong way, as I did with this statement. The great thing about the blogosphere, is it offers a forum where people can defend themselves when they feel they are being unfairly maligned, as Ms. Brown has chosen to do in this case. Unlike a newspaper, we don’t put the correction on page E9.